The Dynamics of Higher Education Development in East Asia

Asian Cultural Heritage, Western Dominance, Economic Development, and Globalization

D. Neubauer, J. Shin, D. Neubauer, J. Shin, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137347374
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book examines four theses regarding Asian higher education and development: interplay between cultural traditions, economic development, globalization, and the evolution of the 'hybrid' university. Top scholars evaluate these hypotheses and determine the elements shaping the history and present circumstances of Asia-Pacific higher education.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Four Hypotheses of Higher Education Development

John N. Hawkins, Deane Neubauer, and Jung Cheol Shin

How might we “explain” the particular pathways that higher education (HE thereafter) has taken in the Asia Pacific region, especially with respect to its social, economic, and cultural dimensions? This question was the problematic for a seminar organized by the East-West Center and Seoul National University (SNU) and with the cooperation of UNESCO Bangkok held at SNU in May 2012. Twelve scholars from throughout the region addressed this subject over the course of three days. The papers that resulted from this process have been revised and constitute the majority contents of this volume.

To provoke the discussion for the seminar, the authors advanced four contending (and often conflicting) hypotheses that were advanced to “account for” or explain the course(s) that HE has taken throughout the Asia Pacific region over the past five or six decades. The chapters that follow in this volume engage one or more of these contending hypotheses.

The “Western Dominance” Hypothesis

It has been argued by many, in both Asia and the West, that the basic architecture and culture of HE is a Western creation, and that the most we can discern of any differences would be variations on this dominant theme, in countries, for example, that were or were not colonized by the West. Perhaps, the most persuasive argument along these lines belongs to Philip Altbach, who in many publications has argued along the following lines:

Two basic factors shape Asian higher education systems—the foreign origin of the basic academic model and the indigenization of the universities as part of the development process. The nature of foreign models differs considerably as does the indigenization response of individual countries. Countries, which experienced colonialism, faced a different reality than nations, which were able to use an independent judgment in the adoption of foreign influences. In Asia, as in other parts of the Third World, the impact of Western academic models and institutions has been significant from the beginning and it remains important even in the contemporary period. (Altbach 1989, 9)

This argument is carried further by both Western and Asian scholars to assert that in the main one cannot find a contemporary Asian university that is Asian in origin (Altbach and Umakoshi 2004). And, it is asserted, one cannot find an Asian country that has managed to keep its premodern academic institutional traditions even though many Asian countries possessed such traditions. If this is true, important implications arise for a wide variety of other “education and development” concerns. It is not likely, for example, that with such a late start, Asian HE could ever hope to compete on the same set of standards with Western universities. Arguments can be made that Western HE is so well entrenched—particularly at the top level—that the quest for world-class status, high rankings, leadership in science and technology, and publication leadership to name just a few, will for the foreseeable future remain the prerogative of the top-ranked Western universities. Certainly, the idea that some new form of HE, one built on a different set of cultural values, is not likely to emerge or if it does, would never be competitive with the current world array of higher education institutions (HEIs).

Another feature of Western dominance in HE is the considerable use of English as the dominant language of research, and, increasingly, instruction. English is the most widely used language for research and development and for the publication of the top-ranked journals especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Non-Western universities that seek to raise their status are now doing so by announcing that they are introducing English language courses of study in selected fields in order to increase their share of student inflow.

Finally, when Asian universities seek to expand and transform themselves in ways that will lead to greater quality and global recognition, they often seek to emulate top Western HEIs, increasingly those in the United States, rather than seek to develop an institution based on traditional cultural norms and values. It is likely, so this argument goes, that the future of HE will be an increasingly “Americanized” HE model. This movement has been labeled by some as the “Emerging Global Model” of HE, one that is increasingly pursued by educational policy makers in most nations. This model is a mix of European and American forms and values, including values such as democracy, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, and so on (Mohrman 2008).

The Asian Values HE Transformation Hypothesis

The Asian values counter hypothesis, however, has been articulated in a variety of forms. For example, if one takes China, one can see a case being made for reinterpreting the goals and objectives of HE in light of traditional Chinese values associated with Confucianism and Daoism. The guidance that these values pose for HE institutional development in such areas as virtue, relational harmony, distributive justice, sustainability, self-cultivation, and especially the global interest and concern with how to determine “quality” in HE, it could be argued, will result in a new kind of HEI, a new university with specific indigenous Chinese characteristics (Silova 2010). Given that China has had a long history of HE predating the arrival of the West, there are indigenous features that could be incorporated into the more conventional “modern” university. Specific features of traditional Chinese education that are shared by other Confucian-based cultures in the region (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) such as high-stakes testing, meritocratic reward structures, harmonious hierarchical social structure, to name a few, would be merged into the existing Western model to result in a hybrid HE model—one that reflects the cultural values of the region.

The argument could be carried further to suggest that other cultures in the region will, over time, develop their own higher educational systems with indigenous characteristics. This would be especially true of India, which also has a long history and tradition of HE predating the development of the European university, and of nations in the region with Islamic and Buddhist educational traditions and values, among others.

It has also been argued that the undeniable economic success of several Asian nations is due in large part to educational and cultural values that are inextricably linked to an educational system, which while familiar to Western models, is in fact tightly bound to traditional educational structures and practices that long predate contact with the West. And by extension, this argument undermines the economic determinism argument in that Asian economic development is of a special kind, distinct from the human resource development model that so characterized economic growth in the West.

Elaborating on what a system such as this might look like would be a worthy research project. Some elements of this are already visible in China, perhaps India, Japan, and elsewhere where “hybrids” are appearing in governance, curriculum, teaching methods, and other areas, and efforts at indigenizing are developing in provocative and interesting ways (Hawkins 2007).

Economic Determinism Hypothesis

Even while the employment of “education” in general and HE in specific had been present in some Asian societies in major and manifest ways prior to World War II to link it with “development” (perhaps most specifically in Meiji Japan), it has been in the postwar decades that this relationship has come to be ascribed to in ways that variously render it an article of faith, or a tenet of presumed scientific veracity and certainly as a fundamental and widely accepted policy belief. So much is this the case, that within the current policy frame of Asian HE, this relationship is advanced with such certitude that it is difficult to find a counterargument. Indeed, in country after country from Japan, to China, to Thailand, to India, and beyond, the linkage is so firmly embraced that its obverse has also become common policy currency: namely, that when assessing countries in the region that lag behind in economic development, a preferred explanation is to point to the inadequacy of their educational systems as a primary causal element.

What had become the case during the early decades after World War II when Asian countries were either pursuing an industrial model in their transitions from dominant agricultural societies (traditionally elite dominated) to industrial modes of production or reindustrializing from the ravages of the war, has become even more true in the long transition to postindustrial, knowledge-based societies, where it is argued that “innovation capital”—and along with it the notion of the “innovative university”—has come to perform the role previously progressively played by land-based capital, industrial capital, and finance capital (Christensen and Eyring 2011). Within knowledge-based societies, a range of structures and skills that extends from innovation creation, to innovation exploitation and implementation (which itself can range from “making” the knowledge product to perfecting its use within “soft” structures), to social transformation, all have their nexus within the achievement of an “educated” population to which HE is given major responsibilities. This is true even in the most recent transformation of this function wherein the nexus of innovation is shifting in a significant measure outside universities and their associated research institutes to private sector entities (Pillay 2011).

For the purposes of this volume and its goals, the critical question is the extent to which this process of linkage between education and economic development, especially tertiary education, has become a fundamentally reductionist or (alternatively) determinative force. If one can argue that (a) the primary policy objective of Asian governments is development, and specifically economic development, and (b) widespread effective tertiary education is a necessary precondition for such development (even while it might not be a sufficient condition), then it would seem that (c) the degree to which HEIs produce the necessary conditions for development become their essential common factor. Beyond this, one could argue that such might be the case whether or not the “proof” of the relationship is drawn from the relative success of a country with respect to market forces, or from the perspective of governmental priority setting within policy.

In the terms of this volume, the hypothesis of economic primacy “trumps” that of either Western emulation or cultural values as an explanatory frame that accounts for the shape, scope, and trajectory of Asian HE, although it leaves space for the hybrid model referred to above and outlined further in the concluding chapter.

The Globalist Inclusion Hypothesis

The burden of the previous argument, however, confronts an additional hypothesis that states that the nature of contemporary globalization is such that it creates “extranational” frames of reference for the entire range of goods, services, quantities, and qualities that are or may be exchanged/transmitted within or by global markets. A useful perspective on contemporary globalization is to see it as a nonlinear but cumulative enterprise that has progressively drawn more activities in the world into common frames of reference that can be used both to summarize the range of experiences that can be studied within these global frames and to differentiate them (the familiar: local). As such, some would argue that contemporary globalization is useful to examine as a set of distinct and progressive phases, each characterized by a modal organizational frame and related to particular conjunctions of labor, identities, technology, finance, intellectual capital, and so on (Neubauer 2011).¹

The burden of this hypothesis is that the boundaries that formerly circumscribed HE in a largely national context are loosening, and in marginal cases have begun to disappear. One indicator of this phenomenon is the steady growth of cross-border education in all its various forms, estimated to reach 7.5 million students by the end of the current decade. Another, and perhaps more striking, manifestation has been the explosive growth of rankings for the so-called globally competitive universities. At the core of this quest is a complex notion of what such institutions are and the belief in many countries that possessing such institutions allows one to participate in an increasingly important exchange of symbolic currency that is employed and linked to a vast array of other global exchanges, including those directly linked to other economic entailments (Marginson 2010).

The burden of this hypothesis is that increasingly global interdependence is coming to dominate policy frames, which in turn dictate the environment within which HE takes place. Within HE, the entire range of institutional policies and practices begins to shift in the direction of some convergence with what is modeled as the “globally competitive university” by the ranking phenomenon. This can and does take place within the subordinate context of differentiation that already characterizes national HE systems and structures, such as those for “elite” institutions (e.g., the 985 and 211 institutions in China, the national centers of excellence universities in Japan, etc.) that come to be models for others within the national context. The burden of this hypothesis is that over time, the emergent “template” of the globally competitive university will come to dominate national systems and both frame and constrain their shape and content with respect to other contending “realities” such as those identified in the three other hypotheses.

The chapters of this volume are arranged to proceed in the direction outlined by these four hypotheses and to propose their own view based on their historical overview of each HE system included in this book. Shin (2012), for example, has explained Korean HE development, which shows remarkable accomplishments during the last six decades, from the multiple perspectives of Western university ideas, Confucian culture, and economic dynamics instead of engaging the specific perspective proposed in the final chapter. In perusing these hypotheses contributors have been given license to explore both the range of the specific hypothesis and to extend beyond it to initiate the exploration that we will take up and continue in the concluding chapter of the volume: namely, is something that we might identify as a distinctly “Asian hybrid” university emerging from these complex dynamics, and if so, (a) what are its features and (b) what can we say at this early point about its likely probable futures?

NOTE

1. The five states that Neubauer identifies are (1) 1.0—historical globalization throughout the world prior to the invention of ocean-going sailing ships and the commencement of exploration and commerce that resulted from it; (2) 2.0—progressive global interaction promoted by sailing and other technologies from the fourteenth through the end of the eighteenth centuries; (3) 3.0—the birth and development of industrialization and its technological extensions through the end of World War II; (4) 4.0—the postwar decades through the end of the twentieth century with the extension of previous technologies, dramatically increased global interaction and interdependence (what Harvey calls the destruction of time and space [Harvey 1990]); and (5) 5.0—the entrance to our current era of hyperinterdependence with accompanying shifts in social institutions, the state, identities, and so on (see Neubauer 2011).

REFERENCES

Altbach, P. G. 1989. “Tw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 Introduction: Four Hypotheses of Higher Education Development
• Part I  Cultural Tradition and Higher Education Development
• Part II  Economic Development and Higher Education Development
• Part III  Globalization and Higher Education Development
• List of Contributors
• Index